The prior art has disclosed numerous mobile task chairs for providing seated support to persons in office, academic, and other occupational environments. While the task chairs of the prior art have varied widely in their features, quality, and intended purposes, they are normally united in certain basic structures. A typical mobile task chair has a seat portion, a back portion retained in an upstanding relationship relative to the seat portion, and a means for supporting the seat and back portions for movement over a support surface. The means for supporting the seat and back portions often comprises an extendable and retractable central support together with a base that retains a plurality of caster wheels. Task chairs can additionally include arms, head and lumbar supports, and still further features designed to improve the comfort and functionality of the chair.
Providing task chairs capable of adapting to the needs and desires of a broad spectrum of individuals has been a recognized need in the art. Mobile task chairs seek to accommodate occupants of different heights, weights, and body types, to be adaptable to different types of tasks, and to permit adjustment to suit each individual's preferences. Providing a task chair capable of achieving comfortable, ergonomically sound support to a wide variety of individuals can be critical not only to worker productivity but also to avoiding the deleterious health effects of poor seating support.
Accordingly, mobile task chairs commonly can be adjusted in height relative to a support surface to accommodate different users and applications. Additionally, certain task chairs permit an adjustment of the reclining resistance exhibited by the back portion to adjust to different users, to different preferences, and to different tasks. When tilting is not desired, such as during a meeting, the back portions of many mobile task chairs can be locked against pivoting. Still further, certain chairs permit the depth of the seat portion to be adjusted. With this, the knowledgeable user can adjust his or her chair selectively for ideal comfort and ergonomically sound support.
However, adjustment mechanisms on mobile task chairs are typically disposed out of the way under the chair bottom such that they are difficult to locate. Even when located, the purpose of the adjustment mechanism is often not readily obvious, particularly when the seat occupant is merely feeling around below the seat to find a given adjustment capability. Even where the seat occupant is aware of the location and purpose of the adjustment mechanism, he or she normally has no basis to understand what setting is currently active, such as whether the back portion is already exhibiting maximum resistance or whether the seat portion has already been slid as forwardly as possible. Still further, many chair adjustment mechanisms, including in particular pivoting resistance adjustment mechanisms, require laborious turning of adjustment handles to achieve any perceptible difference in chair performance.
While these problems are common to nearly all task chair users, they are accentuated in conference rooms and similar situations where the seat occupant is unfamiliar with the chair and where multiple different occupants will occupy the same chair over time. Consequently, many seat occupants simply forego attempting to adjust some or all of the chair settings so that they sit in discomfort and ergonomically unsound positions. They live with the original factory settings or the settings suitable to the body and preferences of another seat occupant.